The Cleveland Cavaliers Promote Themselves With a Textbook Narrative of Domestic Violence

The Cleveland Cavaliers aired a promo ad for their playoff game against the Chicago Bulls that is so thoughtless about domestic violence that it's more baffling than it is offensive. In it, a couple reenacts the “Time of My Life” dance scene from Dirty Dancing; when the woman goes in for the jump, and her Cavs-loving boyfriend, realizing she's wearing a Bulls shirt, drops, or maybe throws, her to the floor, where the camera lingers over her curled up in pain. Last we see her, she's chastened and snuggling on the couch with her boyfriend, wearing a Cavaliers shirt and holding an ice bag to her head while he continues to needle her for the crime of being a Bulls fan.

The ad is a platonic narrative of domestic abuse: a woman lulled into thinking she has a loving relationship, then cowed into submission by a seemingly out-of-the-blue act of violence. Thanks for making me rethink my plan to root for you, Cleveland, even if you do have LeBron James now.

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The inevitable rebuttal is “It's just a joke,” because we all know that abusers come up with the idea to abuse all on their own, with no cultural input guiding their choices. There is no reason to believe an advertisement, which exists solely to mold behavior, could mold anyone's behavior.

What's more, as comedian and science educator Raj Sivaraman explained in a 2013 blog post, long-standing research that shows that disparaging humor toward a group of people increases willingness to be aggressive—even violent—toward those people. Taken together, it becomes increasingly hard to argue that humor has no effect on people's attitudes about domestic violence.

Update, 2:07 p.m.: The Cavaliers have issued an apology for the promo: “While the video was not intended to be offensive, it was a mistake to include content that made light of domestic violence. ... We sincerely apologize to those who have been affected by domestic violence for the obvious negative feelings caused by being exposed to this insensitive video.”